Introduction to Fatigue and Fracture Analysis

Course structure This three-day course is presented through lectures and tutorials. Printed supplements are provided for much of the material covered in the course. A number of worked examples are undertaken by the delegates. Active participation from the delegates is strongly encouraged. All delegates will receive a Certificate of Attendance upon completion of this course.
What you will learn

On completion of the course, the attendee will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the basic concepts and theories of fatigue and fracture and be able to adopt them to undertake calculations.

The course introduces delegates to the problems involved in lifing machines, or machine components, for cyclic loading. It will deal with what is, without doubt, the most damaging of the failure modes, which we know as fatigue, arising as it does from the repeated application of a load, as for examples when we re-use a gas turbine many times (LCF) or when a component within the gas turbine vibrates (HCF).

It is not intended to dwell on the metallurgical nature of fatigue but instead to introduce delegates to some of the basic concepts, and resulting methods of calculation, with the aid of which engineers have managed to design for fatigue over the years. Calculating techniques from both the well-established fatigue design approach (SN Diagrams, Goodman Diagrams, Neuber Rule) and from the fracture mechanics approach (Stress Intensity, Paris Curve, Walker etc) will be used.